The Clinical Outcomes After Intratympanic Gentamicin Injection to Treat Menière's Disease: A Meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVES

In recent decades, intratympanic gentamicin (ITG) has increasingly been used to treat intractable Menière's disease (MD). We performed a meta-analysis of pooled clinical outcomes, exploring whether ITG was effective and safe.

DATA SOURCES

Cochrane Library database, Embase, and Medline.

STUDY SELECTION

We searched scientific and medical databases to March 2018 for articles evaluating clinical outcomes after ITG treatment of intractable MD according to the American Academy of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery (AAO-HNS) guidelines.

DATA EXTRACTION

We performed a meta-analysis to evaluate treatment efficacy and safety. Quantitative and descriptive information of included RCTs was obtained.

DATA SYNTHESIS

We ultimately evaluated 49 of the initially retrieved 1,062 citations (the 49 articles included data from a total of 2,344 MD patients). In almost all studies, patients served as their own controls; "before-and-after" clinical outcomes were reported. The I metric was used to explore heterogeneity.

CONCLUSION

Overall, our results seem to provide the limited evidence about efficacy and toxicity effects of ITG. However, clinical outcomes require further confirmation; many included studies were poorly designed, less than 2 years for reporting results in MD are in the majority of patients. More long-term prospective follow-up, high-quality, large-scale, randomized controlled trials are needed to confirm that ITG is safe and effective when used to treat intractable MD.